Pringle: Just like a first kiss, we all remember our first bat
Cricket bats are more than just planks of willow, for many they shape the path you take as a player...
Derek Pringle looks at the bond a player builds with his favourite willow...
Cricket bats. Has there ever been a more cherished piece of sporting equipment? Balls might do more things, like swing and spin, and move through time and space, but a player has to put them to exceptional use to claim one as their own. Bats, though, are intensely personal, hewn from nature, with the best made by talented craftsmen. As such they are fetishistic, a personal Excalibur, and we’re not talking the shoulder-less bat once used by Lance Cairns.
Much as one remembers their first kiss, cricketers of all competences can recall their first bat. Mine was a handmade mid-size one from a maker called ‘HV Odd’ in Clapham, a small company my father had used when playing for Kew during the 1950s. I sanded it, linseed-ed it and pampered it generally, though unlike Nasser Hussain and his favourite bats growing up, I stopped short of taking it to bed with me.
I cannot recall what an ‘Odd’ bat cost back in 1967, the year I got mine, but the best modern bats now sit beyond the £400 mark, which makes them expensive items. But like any bespoke object, hand-crafted from nature (willow blade and bamboo/rubber sandwich handle), it is made with care and attention and is unique, at least at the micro level.
Bats symbolise cricket in a way balls never can, even though they have been less of a constant, in shape and size, than their spherical companion. Due to kiln drying and the various ways they can be pressed, today’s bats have greater volume to weight ratio than ever before, characterised by edges as thick as railway sleepers but with a pick-up as delicate as a Jedi Lightsaber.
As such, bowlers have found themselves under increasing duress, mostly from the speed with which the ball now rebounds off the bat face. As a result, injuries to them, fielders and umpires are on the increase, as is the number of sixes struck, a quadruple whammy that has forced the MCC, as guardians of the laws, to introduce limits to bat thickness. The new dimensions – and umpires will have a contraption that the bat must pass through from top to bottom – are a maximum 40mm for the edge with a maximum depth, from front to spine, of 67mm. These are added to the restrictions placed on the width of the blade (108mm), which has been with us for over 100 years.
The extra springiness has come at a trade-off, with bats less robust than they used to be – which in turn creates a whole new dynamic between bat and batsman. If bats don’t last as long, owners cannot become as attached to them as they once were, which turns bats – bespoke or otherwise – into commodities to be used and then tossed aside for another, at least in the professional game.
A bit like vintage sports cars, everyone will have a favourite bat,
Just as one remembers their first kiss, players of all competences will remember their first cricket bat
whether it be the nut brown Sykes bat used by Don Bradman, the maker’s name burnt into the face, or the Gray-Nicolls’ Kaboom used by David Warner, a multi-stickered war club. The 1970s probably saw bat design at its most radical with the Gray-Nicolls Scoop, the Slazenger V12, the Stuart Surridge Jumbo all introduced alongside the Run Reaper, the last having 13 large conical holes drilled through from front to back. Unlucky for most who used it, it did have the advantage of whistling when wielded with vigour.
Gordon Greenidge was the first I saw use a Scoop, which is my favourite design. He seemed to hit the ball so hard with it that it swiftly became an item of lust. As a model, the Scoop was in its prime from 1975-1990 though Monty Panesar resurrected it, briefly, a few years ago and may even have used it for his dramatic rearguard against Australia at Cardiff in 2009.
The best bat I ever had though was an ‘Ian Botham Attack’ by Duncan Fearnley. Initially, that model was made only for Botham but during the 1992 World Cup he asked me to knock-in one of the four he had with him. I did as asked but as he never asked for it back, I kept it. Using it made me realise that the bats players like him and Graeme Hick got were a notch above those given to the likes of me and Gladstone Small, also Fearnley users at the time.
I was not overly fussy about how a bat should be other than it was around 2lbs 10 oz in weight, but some batsmen are finicky to the point of obsession. Some swear by a fine grain to the wood, others to an evenly-spaced wide grain. Nick Compton, a top-order batsman for Middlesex, apparently likes a bespoke grip, insisting on lumps and different thicknesses at various points on the handle. The number of bespoke variations are myriad.
It probably doesn’t happen as much now, with bats being more expendable than they were, but there were players who would take umbrage merely when another handled their bat. Hussain was one who objected to such behaviour, treating it as a personal affront if anyone so much as picked up one of his bats. Mind you, he was not so attached to other pieces of equipment, leaving gloves, thigh pads and even his England blazer behind at various venues on the 1989 Nehru Cup tour of India.
While many players see the bat as an extension of their personality, the very best know it is the man who counts most. That is why Allan Border borrowed one of Botham’s Duncan Fearnley bats when he was enduring a bad trot during the 1982/83 Ashes. That he almost won a Test for Australia with it, from a hopeless position, was something that might have tested even Botham’s conscience, but against all perceived wisdom, he did it with a bat he had yet to form a bond with. Maybe that was the start of it as he did not hand it back.